The Old Stone Jail

What is today known as the Old Stone Jail was built around 1835 of a sandstone named for the location where it was first found at Aquia, Virginia. Local lore has it that the Jail’s stone came from the South Anna River. By 1841 both jails were being used by the county; the older jail as a debtor’s prison, and the new stone jail held criminals and runaway slaves. The county’s original jail was out of service by 1844, leaving the stone jail to handle all imprisonment.

Stafford County historians Rick and Jerrilynn Eby MacGregor visited the jail in 2019 and documented their observations, focusing on the Aquia stone that was used to construct it. Read about here in this abstract:

The iron jail holding cell was made by Stewart Jail Works, a division of Stewart Iron Works. In the early 20th century Stewart was one of the world’s largest producers of iron fencing, and began making jail cells such as the one at the Old Stone Jail in the 1930’s.

Several Federal Prisons had contracts with Stewart Jail Works: Alcatraz, Sing Sing and Leavenworth all had Stewart iron. The addition of this state-of-the-art iron cell to the Old Stone Jail likely took place in the 1930’s.